a meteor crashes to work in central russia injuring over twelve hundred people we've got firsthand accounts from our special report coming up in just a few seconds from here on r.t. . tit for tat currency clashes and the euro zone's plight occupy the hearts and minds of financial decision makers meeting here in moscow. and president obama's candidate for defense secretary is republican senators who say they don't know enough about the man heading for the pentagon. live from the new center here in moscow this is r.t. with the screen twenty four hours a day picture this it's eight fifty one in the morning in

a mid-sized city east of the urals in central russia when the sky is lit up by the far path of a meteorite about to smash into its final resting place here on earth right in the middle of russia well r.t. has got a firsthand account from a man who witnessed the dramatic arrival. big bright like he was shining across the sky you know blinding brighter than the sun and then it was followed by a huge. explosion you know what a minute or so later that broke glass and everything the late fixtures were swaying back and forth and i don't point to when looked out the window when i saw this giant street going across the sky like the tail of the cloud of what would have just happened. at that point i knew it was something that came from the sky immediately called one of my teammates who lives in my building and i you know i

couldn't get through to him my phone and work so i was a little bit scared at that point when unsurprisingly the media triggered huge panic among people in russia's urals it took a while before it became clear that this was actually a space rock streaking across the sky and crashing into well off as you would have pissed off he's just arrived in the affected region a terrifying experience of course for the people where you are now so tell us exactly what happened you go what have you heard from them. well this was right about the time when most people were already at work the children were in schools and in kindergartens and all the sudden this extremely bright flash of light one man told me that it actually hurts even looking at it and then this object moving through the skies without any saudi leaving this clear trail of smoke then it disappeared and was followed by a series of massive explosions which literally a rocked the whole city sending pieces of glass flying everywhere and well many

people managed to actually fill what was going on many of these videos are now online here is the one actually picturing the moment of one of the explosions. so it's clearly heard the sounds of slug glass and to the alarms going off it's like a scene from a science for a movie but happening in reality obviously it's a shock to the residents off chile i will scan the nearby areas in the first few hours before lines didn't work probably people were trying to reach each other ask what was going on and all these rumors started spreading that it could have been an airplane or a satellite which went down a media or even one all the way up to the start of the end of the world and

actually artie's documentary crew was filming here in the area right at this time let's listen to what they have to see about what they saw. that we saw a huge tail in the sky light from an airplane and then there was a bright fire and an explosion but the feeling was like there are three shattering we thought a military jets may have crashed or that it was some manmade disaster it was a relief to find out it was a natural phenomena anybody except. i'm astounded at the plane crashed right into our building then we were told that a wall has been partly disloyal and metal structures inside of a band by the blast wave it was very scary. extraordinary footage there from the documentary team who happened to be there just at the right time to capture all of that hugo we're now reporting that over a thousand people have been injured how were they hurt well unfortunately were twelve hundred people were injured including over two hundred

children but these injuries are mostly minor and connected with these pieces of glass flying around everywhere and fortunately there are no feet audi's nobody was killed and luckily this the media or didn't hit any industrial facilities which there are so many of in this area. r.t.g. going to is going to thanks very much indeed for that update live from chelyabinsk . initial speculation as to the causes of the flashes in the sky went as far as suggesting a nuclear disaster may be to blame earlier discussed with r.t. lindsey france why exactly people did fear the worst. if you look at the area and its history you begin to understand why people are actually expressing relief at the fact that this was a rock falling from the sky and not a nuclear disaster there are seven nuclear fuel plants in that area in fact during soviet times it was sort of a nuclear playground for scientists where a lot of things were tested and nuclear experiments were done and there were

actually two manmade nuclear disasters there one in the fifty's and one in the sixty's so when you're driving to work or picking up your daycare and you see a huge bright flash and you hear an impact like this imagine what you think if you live there not exactly the place you think. your should be told getting but of course interesting enough this region has experienced this sort of thing before yes it seems to be a magnet it's such a mystery to a layman like us who have no idea why something like the media would be so very attracted to eastern russia to siberia and even to southern russia one of the most famous meteorites ever to hit in one thousand eight the famous tom goes to goose scout meteor that they hit out in the very far east it cleared two thousand square kilometers of forest land it's shockingly huge and less than twenty years later another another meteor one nine hundred forty seven another and then another ten years ago in siberia these were huge events. one of the children says about.

their very very slim in fact it's extremely rare to hear of anything there has been one case of a woman being injured by a meteorite falling through her house this happened in the u.s. state of alabama in the one nine hundred fifty s. she was napping it all right through the roof hit her on the arm. grady professor of planetary sciences at the university told all to you live there's no need to worry that more could follow this explosion. things happen all the time. they sonic boom you played a recording of was obviously just immense and it was the boom shattering glass and causing that it was the boom that caused the destruction not the actual landing of the meteorite when the meter i landed i believe it's landed in a lake it didn't do any damage so it's amazing explosion in the atmosphere is it

breaks the sound barrier that causes the problem you shouldn't worry about something else coming from this particular object i mean this is this particular thing that is for lennon as landed there's nothing else going to be chasing down its tail so there's there's no other meteorite going to be coming from this particular object. on r.t. dot com we have live updates on this meteor strike including how some enterprising locals are already cashing in some are trying to sell parts of the crashed media online the most expensive being offered for ten thousand dollars would you believe that of course even if someone is willing to dip into their pocket for this there's no way to verify whether you're buying a piece of meat right or of course just a rusty old stone but jokes aside scientists say that it was indeed the largest recorded object to strike the earth's surface in about a century and we've got some more statistics for you on this latest piece of rock hitting planet earth it's estimated weight was about forty tons when it approached

our planet before it actually then broke up into much smaller pieces it was approaching a speed of thirty kilometers per second the experts say that when it exploded it released a huge amount of energy making the blast even more powerful than the nuclear weapon tested by north korea just a few days ago and specialist a current examining a crater with a width of six meters where a piece of the meteor supposedly crashed more information throughout the day for you on this here in r.t. . a potential currency war and the european debt crisis are dominating a meeting of finance chiefs from some of the world's biggest economies and moscow for russia the gathering is seen as a launch pad for the g twenty summit later this year on his lucy couple of has been

following discussions in the kremlin today. in fact a lot of conflicting statements have been said about this talk of the impending looming currency war which has led some folks some market watchers to be quite confused as to what we'll actually see coming out of this g. twenty talks here in moscow now at the center of the whole controversy and crisis is japan to do with aggressive monetary and fiscal policies it has seen a weakening of the and so what this has resulted in is essentially a clash between the countries very little consensus we did hear from a russian finance minister. who has said that this is certainly an important issue that of currencies that is very much on the table but at the very same time we've seen other world leaders come up and say that you know what currency wars aren't really a threat they're trying to calm down the market to some have even questioned whether japan's actions constitute as a manipulation of the currency basically when

a country is in the dire fiscal situation such as of course as we all know many countries are today like japan for instance is one option that a country house is to devalue its currency so making something like this a twenty dollar bill worth less you can do that by a variety of means for example by printing cash because why would you want to do that when your currency is worth less your manufactured goods are cheaper on the market and that gives you a temporary boost in the economy which could be pretty critical in tough times like this now what we've actually seen the fear here is that when a country does that your trading partner strike back they say ok we're going to lower the value of our currency and that sets off a currency war such as the one that we saw in the one nine hundred thirty s. which has led to the great depression now japan insists that it is simply trying to stimulative kaname it's not doing anything to prompt a full scale currency war of course no country here wants to see that but the reason that we're seeing so much disagreement and so little consensus among the

countries is that you know what for example the united states policy isn't all. different the fed in the u.s. has been printing money like crazy so these developed countries don't really see any incentive in isolating japan in trying to really squeeze down this currency manipulation issue because they don't want to mess around with their economies essentially so that is really the crux of the issue there's a couple of they're not business to closely watching the meeting of the g twenty finance heads. business correspondent. has more on what's catching the attention the other issue that's being actively discussed by the finance ministers here in the last go is the so-called financial transaction tax in europe that the european commission claims will bring in additional thirty five billion euro to the european kafirs earlier today i actually spoke to the head of the o.e.c.d.

on fugu rio who said that this measure would only work if all of the world's leading a part of these would agree to it and he explained why you could watch that entire interview later on on r c and of course all the details of the g twenty finance ministers meeting the coming into business bulletin at eighteen thirty g.m.t. . here with. still to come in the program libya prepares to mark the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled. preparations include setting up roadblocks across the country nato forces gathering in the capital as a number of those protesting against the new government increases. in the. fuel offices means more crime.

anyway. wealthy british. economy. building a new. mission

to teach music. i. use continues now here in o.t. in the us senate republicans have stalled in the tempo of the white house to make chuck hagel the secretary of defense he fell to vote short and said this is decided to win some time to find out more about him if he's going to come on explains those who blocked the vote on chuck hagel nomination this thursday know very well that he will eventually be confirmed as defense secretary there are enough votes in the senate to confirm him but the stalling of the vote together with the humiliating treatment that the senators gave chuck hagel two weeks ago at his confirmation hearing this whole process is seen as a message all by itself those lawmakers showed that they could crush anyone who

would allow themselves to dissent from washington's core foreign policy beliefs chuck hagel remarks at the confirmation hearing disappointed even his supporters during the hearing which to me seemed like an inclination mr haygood had to backtrack on many of the statements he had made before including that war with iran should not be an option including his criticism of israel's actions and some other foreign policy views that he had expressed as a senator so throughout that long and exhausting hearing mr hague kept apologizing for much of the previous statements he had to take from previous positions he had taken and he bent backwards to show how quote unquote mainstream his views are in the senator's cape kept accusing him of not being again quote unquote mainstream enough to get the job chuck hagel swore to defend basically all of washington's foreign policy orthodoxies his confirmation process has been humiliating in many ways than it demonstrated the state of u.s. foreign policy of policy basically intolerant of will try to do vision alternative claude having said all that the president's decision to nominate. had taken

before it was also seen as a message president obama had said previously that there is too much of your talk going on and maybe by nominating chuck hagel he wanted to play down because too many people here in washington are too eager to talk war just during the confirmation hearing the word war was mentioned one hundred twenty times the word iran one hundred eight times by comparison afghanistan the war that the u.s. is fighting right now just twenty six mentions of course those are just words but they may very well show how eager many many in washington are to discuss new wars without even having finished the old ones. head for british m.p.'s he was stressed or depressed and we got the story of why politicians will soon be getting free mental health treatment with even having to leave westminster. plus a top secret documents surfaces revealing his plans for military involvement in

mali you know if you don't call me lift the lid on the plans of the world's most feared terra networks. libya is braced for fresh unrest the second anniversary of the revolution that toppled gadhafi is being held under the threat of violence security is tight and foreigners are leaving all mess the first protests against the current government are expected in benghazi the birthplace of the revolution were for more on the story not joined by the able to have a loose she's a political analyst and professor at the ultimate university in amman well foreigners fleeing the country borders with egypt and tunisia have been closed doesn't look like war as if they're preparing for violence rather than celebrations in libya. good evening. to what we have seen over the last two years in libya is that this integration of a new form of some throw control paving the way for the fragmentation of the

country into three states at the same time there is rampant lawlessness in the country there is an outgrowth of fundamentalism of the chrome on the inside that has spilled over and somali as we have seen over the last couple of months a little bit. more than two months and at the same time we have this but sort of. strife breaking out between the front militias and the country so clearly what is taking place now is what was planned for libya to begin with as we have seen and every country that was overrun by the. to who are says or. forces from somalia to iraq in every single case we have witnessed the this month turning of the sun throw state approx. setting up the country for

fragmentation on that but what does that mean for grace so what does fragmentation and the disintegration achieve what they would those external force is want to play a country to just collapse like that one of the intentions. we're also seeing this in syria actually right now on the thirty on excuses or pretexts in fact this is part of the plan for a new middle east this would enable israel to become the regional. which would not be possible if you know how powerful are up some states and said instead you've got to have a whole bunch of states some of which would be sunny some shiites some coptic some caught of there some modern my daughters etc etc etc the point is to pave the way for imperialist control pure and simple the point is to change and

abundant country into a deep in the country this has been the exercise that was protestant and one country after another for different reasons always the excuse is the most risky i'm human rights and mind you they have exercised the same type of thing with the former soviet union and now with russia well but you could say nato is there helping at the moment from some britain they've offered to help libya protect its borders there are nato forces now to provide security during these protests during the second anniversary celebrations as as they're called but are you saying that they're not to help but actually to take over is that the main ambition. well they need not take over the rectally but they're setting up conditions so they that their control would be problem i mean let's remember here before the bombardment of

libya before killing over one hundred and thirty thousand libyans via strikes or supporting criminal militias on the ground we did not need nato forces be they french or british forces to secure the borders with tunisia or egypt we didn't need that. their bombardment of the country and their support of the fundamentalist of the cellophane jihadists is what create the pretext for their continued existence in libya again the word imperialism does not necessarily mean direct control imperialism means the tendency of be a proxy governments or militias and that's what we have in libya right now. we have alleged islamic governments but governments with with plural with an ass because

really what they're setting up here is several governments not just one central government really what what they're there to do is to secure the continuation of internal strife as happened in somalia iraq afghanistan the security and stability quote unquote of the croxley rulers that they have stopped list in libya dr abraham illusion political analyst professor at these at and a university in amman thank you very much indeed for your thoughts thank you you thank. or to some other international news now here in south africa athletics superstar oscar pistorius has been formally charged with the murder of his girlfriend the man known as the blade runner will be held in custody until court hearings begin on tuesday. was shot dead at the paralympians house on thursday in the suburbs of her toria. thousands of anti-government protesters have packed a major highway in the bahraini capital of manama today after

a sixteen year old protester and a police officer died during demonstrations marking the second anniversary of the country's uprising two years ago protests in the country began to demand more freedoms and rights for the shia majority in a nation run by so many. activists in syria one hundred fifty rebels and government soldiers have been killed in the last two days of heavy fighting in the northern city of aleppo it began on wednesday as rebels hit the city's civilian airport in a nearby military airfield control of the international airport and provide a strategic advantage against president assad's forces the conflict in syria's loss of almost two years now with the death toll already over sixty thousand. the british government program of cuts has resulted in a drastic drop in the number of police officers to the lowest level in over a decade the radical reform package has already spot many security questions or had a chance to ask in peace on both sides of the argument if the fears of reasonable.

in the number of police officers dropped to the lowest levels for eleven years as the impact of a twenty percent cut and whitehall funding to police budgets takes effect but just think more about these. joined by conservative m.p. and britain and labor and. thank you very much to both of you for joining us jim i'm going to start with the a lot of the police officers that we were speaking with we've got is a bit of. it at the same time they see the number of police. and police. i mean it's quite confusing time i think for police officers as to what's being expected. i understand that there may be slight consolation but given the battering the reputation of the police is hard over recent months the government had to take steps to shore up the reputation in terms of morale. the police service quite dramatically in my part of east london we've seen over one hundred

fifty uniform stuff go in the past two years productions in crime which we've seen year on year zero for six years and reverse and for the past two years have been an increase in crime last year of nine percent so as certain parts of the country the cuts are being imposed are effect saying the safety of people on the streets what do you say to. the lowest level of police now for eleven years. so they not know the police are having to take their share of the of the spending reductions along with the rest of the public sector to get the deficit under control and what we're actually seeing is it's not about police numbers it's what you do with the police or innovative ways of maintaining a police presence on the streets and jim a home for to have a increase in crime in his constituency but the fact of the across the country on average last year crime fell by eight percent and in fact it fell in my force in leicestershire by eight percent as well so we are seeing a overall reduction in crime across the country at the same time we're cutting police numbers but they're doing innovative things like sharing back office

services be able to foresee. to save money and keep those place out on the streets where people want to be sort of filling in paperwork and all that we read to it's not just the police integrity it's the public perception of the police integrity and the reforms will help to improve the public perception of prison territory. right thank you very very much for joining us you can join in our debate online dot com we've also been on twitter a lot of the public have been getting involved in this debate as well as members of the police. police reform to join in the debate about the latest police reforms. that will be about with the business but the news too much to say with more for you in about half an hour from now a business on my mind because kate is here in the studio and that is what is next here on r.t. no it's a big day in the course of moscow hosting the g. twenty leaders you're talking about no doubt but other things happening of course you know business well i mean that's the dominating thing as you would imagine as you would expect but there's other things going on the russian stock market has. today that is big news i'll give you market reaction to that as well as. ukraine.

and could be on the horizon tell you what about it bill off is back in the business he thanks very much indeed. today violence is once again flared up. these are the images. from the streets of canada. showing operation to rule the day. speak your language as i think about the war not against. the program documentaries in spanish what matters. little turn it into anger stories.

i'll teach spanish find out me visit actuality. welcome to business i'm katie pilgrim thank you for joining me now the group of twenty nations the g twenty met today here in moscow as we've been reporting of course and aside from an exploding crashing through this guys there were plenty of all the elements to contend with while the planet was dealing with quite literally suffering wrong the twenty most powerful influential leaders gathered to discuss

how to save the world economy nama toughest annette's go wraps up the days of ends for us. president putin called on the g. twenty nations to eliminate what he called economic imbalances to put the global economy back on its growth track he also reminded the g twenty finance ministers of something that russia and other developing nations have been insisting on for quite some time the need to redistribute the voting rights within the international monetary fund russia's year long presidency in the g. twenty normally means that it will hold the summit here in the country later on in september but also that it has a unique opportunity to put the issues that it considers a good move on that summit agenda and that's quite an important mission considering that the g twenty members accounted for about ninety percent of the world's most of the old rules domestic product and about two thirds of its population as the group

of twenty finance ministers gathered here in moscow for their meeting this week many of them want to focus primarily on two issues fiscal health and monetary policies and that's not surprising considering that the whole of the g. twenty nations are really struggling with mounting debt and budget deficits as their biggest plats but not foreshocks with the lowest debt ratio of any g twenty member russia has its old set of goals its own set of priorities one of the issues that it has already put on the table is the investment incentives and creating jobs primarily in the high tech sector as the main driving force of future growth and that's it's precisely that we're setting the right policy target that was the original idea behind the g twenty and some of these policies are already bearing fruit like stabilizing economic growth and certainly in the euro zone that's according to the european central bank had mario drawing it as usual he was scarce

on the details but here's what he said during a press conference. in the central bank headquarters here in moscow you see uniformly signs of stability zeeshan of increasing confidence we see spreads going down we see volatility going down we've seen by and large stock markets going up early on friday i had an opportunity to speak with our q gudiya he's the head of the organization for economic cooperation and development he was enthusiastically sharing the o.e.c.d. his latest work called going for growth especially it's a very detailed country by country a rule him out for how to get the global economy out of its current stagnation mode what we see as a lot of this why did the old diploma in topics that really dominate the agenda that's exactly what's happening right now with the so-called currency wars and number of central banks from china to japan and the us federal service while our

massaging their currency rates to give their economies a competitive edge i asked the o.e.c.d. these gurus if he thinks that these currency interventions are actually a threat to the global economy there are no currency wars today we are far far further away today from the currency war than we were two or three years ago when these french phrase was coined ok what we have today is a number of countries exploring ways in which they can improve the growth prospects . and improve the job creation ok not necessarily manipulating the currency to gain competitiveness at the expense of the next person you can watch that entire interview later on archie but you should keep in mind that regardless of what agenda the finance minister has said it could not really be expected to be the main

agenda for the summit which is it six months from now and a lot can happen between now and then. and it wasn't just the russian skies that suffered a blow today but russia's main stock market moskos exchange of its initial public offering this friday but ended up at the bottom of the suggested range fifty five roubles a pauper now the total value of the bourse now stands at four point two billion dollars that was a disaster both five hundred million dollars in total was raised from the i.p.o. but not nearly as much as home russia is keen to make the stock market more desirable to companies who prefer to live in london or new york and i would rather my which check out the markets and see what happened in moscow today and we did end up with declines really seven tenths of a percent for the r.t.s. and the mice it's just that i want to mention that one stock in particular took

a battering from the blast chill of things zing zing company near the brass not solve the metal roof was partly destroyed by it so we're watching that once a stock already suffering we have the financial indications on monday the russian ruble finished up the day lower so the basket of currencies to the u.s. dollar and the common currency to see what happened in europe because we had u.k. stocks they spent much of the day we languish in in the red but have gradually crew old their way into positive territory very modestly indeed as you can see just one basis point dismal u.k. resell figures came out largely a put down to bad weather though meanwhile mainland europe in stocks didn't manage to get above the line their hearts are down for the dax to get as stocks still losing value of us despite encouraging us data including the best of forecasts data on consumer confidence and new york area manufacturing that was upbeat but also

want to mention the fact that industrial production nationwide actually posted contraction in january that is factories to a breeder of the biggest back to back in three decades as a declines for wall street. now moving on gas from is not budging when it comes to ukraine and gas contracts kiev wants to renegotiate its deal with russia's gas major because they don't want to pay seven billion dollars of unused gas but as far as gas from is concerned at deal's a deal use gas or not in accordance with the take all paid clause in his two thousand ice supply contract now last month ukraine signed a deal with shell to exploit its extensive show gas reserves which has been widely interpreted as an attempt by ukraine to reduce its heavy dependence on russian gas imports. all right then let the wolves moves aside his other day to him all skies

for the talks of the wild. is also one of the main players in the discussions he's a joke section of the organization for economic. development that has the right join me and us into al's business. if you. read. three. three. three blog video for your media project free media our t.v. dot com.

maybe.

the. just so. reviving global economic growth is one of the priorities for the g twenty summit that will take place here in russia. but the key to achieving that is setting the right policies to discuss

what these policies should be i'm joined by on him. the head of the organization for economic cooperation and development thank you so much for joining me sir during this visit to moscow you had a chance to meet with russia's president vladimir putin was rushes bid to join the always discussed was almost the only topic because we did not have time to discuss too many more we discuss the g twenty also the accession of russia into the o.e.c.d. is for us of a game changer and it's going to be very important russia is a very large economy it's a very important presence in the world of energy it's a very important presence in all these international fora accent and so we really are very interested very excited about the buzz ability of having as a member and i think russia can benefit also from being in an institution that is

not about lending money is not about giving grants it's not about fixing economies that are not broken it's about policy discussions about what are the best possible policies and therefore what can be the best practices. that russia can adopt we're not going to tell russia what to do with russia we're going to tell the russians what all other countries in the world are doing about the same problem of health care the same problem of education the same problem with innovation the same problem with research and development the same problem with the tax structures the same problem with the deficit whatever you just mentioned taxation and that's definitely one of the big issues that you're working on in particular with their. yes. trying to work with this scheme that many companies use to avoid paying taxes and these are big companies we're talking about including google and you know

a number of others. what then amazon of course and starbucks and so on these are big names but there are plenty of companies i don't why refer to any company in particular because there are thousands we created the set of rules that are being used legally by these companies to avoid paying taxes ok now we have had a big war against tax havens about excessive bank secrecy about the secret counts by people not divulging the names those are to hide away from the taxpayers so that was in a way an easier war because we were fighting evil guy lity ok right no we are trying to combat a legal practice but that is giving absolutely the wrong results

why because we wanted to avoid double taxation now we have created double nontoxic. and what is happening is that the balance between the multinationals and the states in terms of the states the governments receiving a certain amount of resources that they need to discharge their duties towards the most vulnerable mainly is not happening and in times of tight put it's who is who is getting the brunt of increases in taxes. the middle class the small and medium enterprises that cannot go away and push their profits to the low taxation jurisdictions this is exactly what is happening it is very unfair but also it is politically very dangerous is not going to be possible for too long as you mentioned you were.